The Muslim Brotherhood is likely to select People’s Assembly Speaker Saad al-Katatny to run for president, should it field a candidate, sources from the group told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
Katatny, along with the group’s deputy supreme guide and primary financier Khairat al-Shater, have reportedly both been under consideration by the group’s leadership in recent days.
However, Shater is currently legally disqualified from running, as he is still technically serving a five-year prison sentence he received from a military court in 2008. Following the fall of the former President Hosni Mubarak, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces released Shater for what it said were medical reasons. According to Egyptian law, a person cannot run for a public post if he or she is in the midst of a prison sentence.
The Islamist group’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, said on its website that 110 members of the Brotherhood Shura Council would meet Tuesday to decide whether to field a presidential candidate.
Mohammed al-Beltagy, a Brotherhood leader, told the Al-Tahrir television channel late Monday that an internal Brotherhood poll showed a majority of its members oppose reversing the group’s earlier pledge not to field a candidate.
The group sources said a number of Brotherhood leaders had also suggested nominating Mohamed Morsy, the FJP leader. However, Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that Morsy was seen emerging from an emergency meeting of the group’s Shura Council on Tuesday.
The Brotherhood has emerged as the country’s most powerful political group since Mubarak was ousted last year, capturing nearly 50 percent of the seats in Egypt's first post-uprising parliamentary elections. Its growing grip on power has fueled concerns among liberals and secularists about whether it aims to govern alone, or control both the Parliament and the presidency.
Given the Brotherhood’s skill in rallying voters, a candidate backed by the group would immediately become one of the front-runners in the presidential race.
Other Islamist factions, such as the ultraconservative Salafis, have already agreed to support one candidate to prevent fragmenting the Islamist vote, according to Yousry Hamad, a spokesman for the Salafi-oriented Nour Party.
This week, the Brotherhood and Salafis took a majority of seats on the panel tasked with writing Egypt’s new constitution. This will give Islamists strong influence over the charter, which will determine the balance of power between Egypt's previously all-powerful president and Parliament, as well as define the country's future identity and role of minorities.
Two days after the 100-member panel was chosen, splits have already emerged. More than a dozen mostly liberal and secular-minded members have withdrawn, saying the committee does not reflect the diversity of Egyptian society.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s ruling military council, which took power after Mubarak’s ouster, is meeting with political parties Tuesday, a day after it issued a veiled warning to the Brotherhood on state television.
For weeks, the Brotherhood has been pressing the ruling generals to sack the current government of Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri, citing its incompetence and saying its poor performance harms the group’s image in the street. The military rejected those demands.
Egypt’s interim constitution, issued after the SCAF held a referendum in March last year, gives the military council the power to dissolve and form governments, not the Parliament.
Unable to exert this power, the Brotherhood has reconsidered its previous pledge not to contest the presidential vote, which many originally saw as an attempt to assure liberals and Egypt’s western allies that the group doesn't intend to govern alone.
Two months ahead of the presidential election, the group has struggled to prevent many of its youth members from supporting Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, a moderate Islamist banned from the group at the time it was against running a candidate.
